Quicksilver appears to be coming back from the dead

Let's take a moment to appreciate the mouse, the marvel of engineering that made computing accessible to the general public. But, if you've ever watched an expert systems administrator rocket through tasks using nothing but the command line and a keyboard, you know the mouse isn't the world's most efficient way to unleash the power of your Mac.

Originally developed by a shadowy software wizard with the handle "Alcor," Quicksilver lost its only parent to a serious case of got-hired-by-Google-itis in 2007. Before becoming completely inundated with "real work," Nicholas "Alcor" Jitkoff released Quicksilver to the open source community where its development splintered and stagnated. Some of us at TUAW, discouraged by performance issues and compatibility problems with newer versions of Mac OS X, lost hope in Quicksilver and began experimenting with alternatives. Others continued to recommend the free utility, which lets users quickly launch apps, move files, compose email messages and, with a little practice, quickly accomplish a broad range of tasks with nothing but a few key strokes.

Now, a team of developers at qsapp.com, who say "Quicksilver is like carrying a light-saber and throwing robots across the room with your mind," aims to unify all of the utility's fragmented open source builds, plug-ins and support groups. The team's latest build, Quicksilver version ß59, addresses a handful of known issues while running the tool on Snow Leopard. Above all, it offers hope for the Quicksilver faithful that someone out there wishes to take ownership of this powerful utility. Mac users can download Quicksilver for free at qsapp.com.